If a word can selectively trigger only the shittiest subset of a population, I’d say that is a pretty effective word. ‘Woke’ is an amazing word simply because the more someone hates the word, the more I know about them.
Yep. Met a guy last night who said that woke is a mind virus. Told me all I needed to know and I stopped talking to him.
The craziest thing is that the basic idea of wokeness as I understand it is being aware of the nuances, feelings, and challenges of others, which is also the basic idea of sayings like ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’ or ‘walk a mile in their moccasins before you judge’. Trying my best to help people who are triggered by the idea of ‘wokeness’ understand that. But more often it seems like they just want a shorthand for demonizing progressives and for them ‘woke’ is just that: a way of negatively branding any policy that might show compassion.
The word “woke” is only the latest iteration of reactionary rhetoric critical of liberals. Before it was ‘woke’ it was ‘politically correct’ and before that ‘bleeding heart’. Conservatives love to recycle, at least when it comes to ideas.
The jab is basically this: Liberals don’t really care about the marginalized. They just pretend to in order to feel better about themselves; signal their superiority; and bring those groups into their political sphere (then do nothing to help them). And the reason this criticism has stuck around so long is because it’s apt. When conservatives and liberals argue over these issues, too often, the marginalized are not on one of the teams; they’re the ball.
The liberal sees the condition of the marginalized; they feel guilty. And that guilt is the thing they really want to remedy. A progressive looking at the same situation feels anger.
I suppose they probably did have equally trashy opinion pieces about the word hip in maybe 1972.
